Microsoft opens up new Windows on the future

Last week Bill Gates unveiled the next version of his Microsoft Windows
operating system, codenamed Longhorn. He did this for a group of software
developers in California but everyone else got to hear what he said.

This new version of Windows will not be beta tested until the end of 2004,
and its final end-user release date has not been stated.

There were two key messages to onlookers: Microsoft Windows will experience
massive and unprecedented growth in one release; and XML, the World Wide Web
Consortium's simple way of specifying hierarchical data, is to be a fundamental
part of that growth.

In less golden years, Gates typically says, watch me teach you all how to
suck eggs. This has been such a year for Microsoft.

He talks first of "headwind challenges". Security and quality control is one
- Microsoft has doubled investment in this area. Cost-conscious customers is
another - future releases will be far more self-managing.

A third challenge, the apparent slippage of the company's technology
leadership in the area of the web and the internet, is addressed by this
Longhorn announcement.

Gates is always bullish. This time he was bullish on computing hardware,
which is still advancing very rapidly.

He is bullish on broadband access and secure chipsets. He is bullish on the
"Digital Decade", the new era of home consumer activity centred on PCs - photo
albums and online shopping. He was notably bearish on e-commerce infrastructure,
pronouncing "not there yet".

Gates's most significant theme is the need to simplify the desktop, which is
an increasingly complex and information-dense environment for users. The tactic
in this regard is to add a massive layer of software smarts in and over the
existing Windows NT and .NET technology, through which users and developers will
encounter a more rigid set of user interface rules, similar to Apple's
OS.

This added value is far more than Microsoft, or anyone else, has ever
attempted in a single project. Windows Longhorn will be the computer user's
concierge. It will listen to, aggregate, filter, sort and tidy up an expanding
flood of inward and outward-bound messages of every type. To listen to Gates,
the era of personal computing sounds done with.

A new (unstated by him) interaction metaphor is something like: Intelligently
Assisted Social Computing.

Gates's new architectural blocks are Avalon (screen), Indigo (network) and
WinFX (disk). Each of these is a massively smarter and more abstract replacement
for existing bits of Windows; bits like GDI, DirectX and Win32, which concern
only IT people and software developers.

Avalon is a kind of all-singing combined web, multimedia and gaming visual
experience. Indigo is a kind of multi-application, multi-communication,
networking co-ordinator. WinFX is a kind of database, file system, search
engine, knowledge-base filing system. Backwards compatibility as far as VisiCalc
is still guaranteed.

Deeply intertwined among these new blocks, says Gates, is XML. It is also
intertwined with SQL, objects, desktop and developers.

Longhorn will swallow all the established XML standards and go further.

It will apply XML everywhere and in many Microsoft-specific dialects. The
most visible of these is XAML. Future application development will start with
XAML, which consists of simple tags such as <button>, rather than with
programs.

Microsoft has not forgotten the user. The Longhorn release, says Gates,
greatly appreciates the cognitive processes of humans just trying to do things.
Voice recognition, natural language processing, searching behaviour and social
networks all have Longhorn support.

Most important, Gates has, in effect, decided that the reason we use
computers is because our memories are faulty; the past is forgotten, the future
is unexpected.

Any remaining doubt that Gates has surpassed Henry Ford as a technology
empire builder is quashed by the complexity and ambition in this speech.